1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to a servo pattern erasing method and apparatus of a hard disk drive, and more particularly, to a servo pattern erasing method and apparatus of a hard disk drive which may not only uniformly erase a servo pattern recorded on a disk but skip the time to stabilize a read/write head after position control of the read/write head needed when a servo writer is used, thus reducing a time to erase the servo pattern.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hard disk drives (HDDs) are data storage devices capable of recording data on a disk or reproducing data stored on the disk using a read/write head. The HDD is widely used as an auxiliary memory device for computer systems because of its fast access time to a large amount of data.
Before reading data from or writing data to an HDD, a servo pattern that is recorded on a servo track of a disk is read to obtain an accurate position. However, a defective servo track due to a servo track write defect or a disk defect generated in the manufacturing process of the HDD may exist. Since the defective servo track causes an error in the process of reading/writing data with respect to the disk, the defective servo track should be corrected.
To correct a disk having a defective servo track, the defective servo track may be erased by using a magnet or by irregularly moving the read/write head over the disk, or the whole surface of the disk may be erased by using a servo writer. However, method disadvantage of erasing a defective servo track by using a magnet is that only one surface that may be accessed by the magnet may be erased due to a limited inner space of the HDD. Also, a disadvantage of erasing a defective servo track by irregularly moving a read/write head over the disk is that all servo patterns on a disk may not be uniformly erased and the read/write head irregularly moves rapidly over the disk so that the read/write head may be damaged. Also, method disadvantage of erasing the whole surface of a disk by using a servo writer is that the method takes a long time and an expensive precision position control actuator is needed.
Accordingly, there is a demand for a method of erasing a servo pattern which may uniformly erase the whole surface of a disk and simultaneously reduce the time to erase a servo pattern recorded in the defective servo track.